


Gone

by PoisonJack



Series: Gauntlet [2]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alpha Axton, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Beta Vaughn, Established Relationship, M/M, Modern AU, Omega Rhys, Omegaverse, Slice of Life, Vaughn is a BAMF, home burglary, more or less haha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-02 00:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20267269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonJack/pseuds/PoisonJack
Summary: Axton calls Rhys late at the office, worried that Jack is up to his shit again. Rhys' apartment has been broken into, and Axton and Vaughn are there to help.Basically a slice of life type thing between writing the sequel to the first story haha :) Can be read on its' own imo, without reading the first part :)This was a request from aprompt list of quoteson tumblr:"Everything we had is no longer there."





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> I think this could be understood well enough without having read the first work, but yeah this is like just a little interim, slice of life type event _after_ the events of [Broken Bonds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12156003/chapters/27585591). It was a request-fill anyways and I really really wanted to write some more rhaxton BAHAH!

Rhys was sitting in his desk chair, leaning back in the glow of the monitor.

He was tired, and everyone else had already gone home for the day. But he_ needed_ to reconfigure this code to make his prototype move with more fluidity, and it really couldn’t wait over the weekend.

He stretched, hearing several pops to accompany the delicious pull of his muscles as he sat back up straight. This was taking forever, and he was getting brain-fog. It was far too late for more coffee-- let alone trying to stay even_ later-_ and Axton would be expecting him home soon... if he wasn’t already back from the gym waiting for him.

Rhys sighed and looked out his office window, enjoying the twinkling the city coming to life at night, and considered just bringing his work home for the weekend… _though_ he knew he and Axton were supposed to move the rest of his shit from his apartment into the alpha’s loft as his lease was about up, and that wouldn’t work.

The omega grunted to himself before cracking his knuckles and praying to whatever might be listening to let him wrap this damn shit up.

Someone must’ve been listening at least, because his cell-phone lit up on an incoming call. A smiling picture of Axton popped up on the ID, and Rhys grinned, answering it.

“Well helloooo perfect timing,” the omega said with an easy grin into the phone as he leaned back again, waiting for the alpha’s pleasantly-gruff tones to fill his ears.

“Rhys? Where are you, darlin’? _Are you okay?”_

The omega frowned as he sat up straighter, a thrill of panic going up his spine. “I’m still at the office trying to-- What’s wrong?” he asked with utmost concern, eyes darting to the office door to make sure it was still locked. “_Is it Jack?”_

“No-- well maybe-- er, I don’t know,” Axton huffed, voice a growl and sounding like his focus wasn’t entirely on the call, wary of his surroundings. “I’m at your apartment. Was gonna grab something on the way home from the gym to make this weekend easier but…” His voice trailed off into another growl.

Rhys frowned to himself, wondering what the hell happened, and waited for his fiance to speak as Axton was still growling to himself and clearly walking about in some kind of fervor. Rhys’ heart-rate sped up over a great many possibilities, and his nails were painfully digging into the palm of his hand when he considered that Jack might be lying in wait for Axton. Yeah, he had a restraining order against the Hyperion alpha, but that didn’t mean much, and Jack was slippery as hell, court orders and sentences be damned.

“What happened? I’m coming over there right now, Ax,” Rhys said as he stood from his chair, closing his laptop and loading it into its case while Axton huffed on the other line.

“No, no I’ll come get you, just stay there.”

“Ax--”

“Someone broke in.”

That gave Rhys pause, his mind a tumult. Was it safer to stay here in his office? Security had certainly been beefed up in certain months, but every time he looked at the frosted glass that had long-since been replaced, it reminded him just how crazy Jack actually was. 

Axton’s annoyed chuffs came through the phone. “I called Vaughn.”

“_Vaughn?”_ Rhys barked out, though not unkindly. “Axton, _call the police.”_

“Fuck the police,” he growled. “Fat lot of help they gave us last time that asshole was involved. I’m gonna come get ya myself. _Just stay there_, okay?” Rhys couldn’t help the little distressed sound that left his lips, though he wished he could as it made Axton’s growls reverberate into the call that much louder. “Vaughn is going to stay here so I can get ya, darlin.”

The chuckle that escaped Rhys was involuntary, but he couldn’t help it; he was scared to death for the other man and didn’t give a shit about his half-empty apartment. “Ax, love, _please_ be careful. If it _was _Jack--”

“He sure as hell won’t catch me unawares twice, sweetheart. I promise ya that.”

Rhys fretted the entire time he waited for the alpha to show up, foregoing any ideas to continue his work, and kept his eyes on the frosted glass of his door while he made a call down to security to make certain the building was still locked down. After the months of physical therapy and recovery, the whole event was still far too fresh in his mind, and Axton’s scar far too pink to be considered ‘old news’.

When the big alpha eventually came for him, Rhys absolutely melted into his embrace, scenting up and down his neck for anything unfamiliar or worrying. Axton’s scent was stronger than usual and musky in a way that made the omega feel very safe indeed, but otherwise he appeared just fine. The concern wasn’t for naught, of course. The last time something ‘bad’ had happened, Axton had ended up shot.

“Fuck, you had me worried,” Rhys chuckled with relief as the bigger man held him and scented him right back. “How bad was it? How’d they get in?”

“Well hell… There’s no way of sugar-coatin’ it, but…” He sighed heavily into the top of Rhys’ head. His hair was coming up a bit from the gel of this morning, but such an intimate scent on him helped soothe Axton’s nerves. Rhys didn’t need more shit right when his lease was about it; this was supposed to be a fresh new start. “Everything we had is no longer there. The TV, the furniture… Hell, they left your bed, but we were gonna sell that anyways.”

The big alpha’s arms were around Rhys comfortingly, and the omega took a mental inventory of the things that had still been left in the apartment. There were things he would miss, some replaceable and others not, but he couldn’t be as upset about it as he should-- not when Axton was right here and still safe and whole without injury. He wouldn’t know the true extent of what was taken until he was inside, of course, but for the moment he couldn’t care.

“...did it look like something Jack might’ve done?” Rhys asked with concern, meeting the alpha’s green eyes and watching him frown in thought. The movement tugged at the scar on his brow that Rhys was so fond of, and he held the alpha a little closer subconsciously.

“I don’t think so… It didn’t feel like it, anyway. ...Did you lock up last time you were there?”

_Fuck,_ Rhys wasn’t honestly sure. He’d last been there a few days back to get another box full of his belongings, and he’d been texting naughty things to the alpha as he was loading up his car. Axton had been at the market shopping at the time trying to get stuff for dinner when Rhys had started making silly puns that had snowballed into the need to get home before the other man and wait naked on the bed for him. 

Honestly, he’d been more excited to see Axton than he had been concerned about locking up at that point, and he couldn’t be positive he’d simply forgotten.

Rhys held Axton’s hand the whole drive back to his apartment, still wary that this might be Jack’s work despite Vaughn already on the scene and holding down the fort.

Both alpha and omega gaped as they slowly pulled up to the curb outside the complex, both wide-eyed as they met Vaughn’s proud little grin under a street lamp as the beta waved at them.

He was sitting outside the complex in one of Rhys’ own living room chairs, his feet on Rhys’ coffee table with a smirk on his face. He would’ve looked right at home in the omega’s own living room, but out on the_ street_, it was a jarring sight. Vaughn just spread his arms as if welcoming them to his abode, and Rhys and Axton got out of the car to further gape at the beta with confused amazement.

“I thought you said they took everything,” Rhys said with a minorly-relieved look to Axton’s equally perplexed expression. His TV was still missing, but the game-system, the coffee-maker, and even his teapot were all sitting about as if Vaughn had re-created the inside of his apartment right here on the curb.

The alpha himself was speechless, and Vaughn hopped up to greet the pair with a smile.

“I would’ve put it all back in, but I was afraid someone might take it again if I wasn’t watching it,” the beta informed with a grin. “Couldn’t get the TV back though, but I got everything they had. Sorry, bro.”

“Okay I am very confused right now,” Rhys stated, still a little floored to be standing in his living room… out on the curb.

“I saw a truck on the way here filled with your stuff. That collector’s edition teapot isn’t exactly common-place,” the beta said with a smirk at the character-shaped porcelain sitting on the coffee table. It was a gaudy and stupid-looking piece, but Rhys had won it in a contest and kept it on the counter with pride, the small, saddled yellow birds and cactus design on a blue glaze reminding him that when in doubt, he always had luck.

Guess that was more true than he’d been amusing himself with.

“Don’t tell me you beat their asses and made them bring it all back,” Rhys laughed with a look at the beta. At Vaughn’s grin, his own faltered with seriousness. He was impressed as hell, if not concerned, and was a little concerned to ask for details. “_Bro.”_

“I don’t believe it,” Axton said in shaking his head, an arm still around Rhys just in case. “Just how any of these guys were there?”

“It was teenagers,” Vaughn admitted with a laugh. “One of them _did _come at me with a knife--” Rhys gasped and gaped at him, and Axton had the good-taste to be ashamed to have put the beta into that kind of situation, even in a roundabout way, “--but disarmament is one of the first things I learned before I bulked up,” he finished proudly, hands on his hips and chin high with pride. “I _convinced _them to bring it all back.”

“You beat up teenagers,” Rhys stated far too calmly for the situation, unable to help how glad he was that Jack wasn’t behind this. “For my chocobo teapot.”

“Your limited _edition_ chocobo teapot,” Vaughn pointed out with a smirk. “And it’s not like I hurt them… really... but they’ll definitely think twice about pulling shit like that again. Especially with a piece of crap swiss-army knife.”

Axton snorted and put his forehead on Rhys’ shoulder, a wide smile on his face that he couldn’t help. “False alarm, it was just a _normal_ robbery, sugar,” Axton tried to joke, and Rhys couldn’t help but laugh, hugging the alpha tightly and chuckling as he pressed a kiss to his jaw.

Rhys looked up at Vaughn, surveying the contents of his apartment with a smirk. “You really are the bro-est of bros.”

Vaughn snorted and rolled his eyes while Axton chuckled. The beta stretched. “Okay, so should we get this all back inside then?”

“I don’t know, your apartment is gonna look _cramped _compared to out here,” Axton joked. “Nice view of the street, too.” Vaughn snorted, and Rhys surveyed the bulkier items that had been taken.

“Should we-- Do you wanna go back and get my car, and we can just, like, bring this stuff back home tonight instead of this weekend?” Rhys proposed, looking between the two men with a shrug. Rhys’ lease was officially up on Monday, and except for these last few things, he’d been living with Axton for months and months already, and Vaughn was over more often than naught. Having all of them together when living at the same place just made logistic sense. “It might be harder to get this stuff back in the elevator or around the stairs than up in the big one at yours.”

Axton looked at Vaughn, and the beta shrugged with a smirk. “Honestly, I didn’t have any plans tonight anyways so I don’t mind if you guys don’t. We could probably just use my car and Ax’s,” Vaughn proposed with a teasing look. “My services don’t come cheap, though, man.”

“I’ll order pizza?” Rhys tried with a little laugh as Axton smirked and muttered something about beer in the fridge, and Vaughn laughed and agreed to the terms. 

“I bet we can have all this stuff loaded in less than an hour. Those kids actually saved you a _lot_ of time, bro.”

“Hey, that’s true,” Axton agreed with a laugh as he was fishing out his keys to open the trunk, and Vaughn pulled his own car around to load up while Rhys scheduled a pizza delivery.

All in all, there was no sign of forced entry, and his apartment hadn’t been damaged too badly to get his deposit back. Aside from a few items like the TV, he really wasn’t as upset as he should’ve been for, you know, a _home-burglary_. But it wasn’t like he’d been living there as he waited out his lease, and anything truly precious to him had been moved to Axton’s loft ages ago. Overall, loading up the cars with the last few items he’d had saved him the whole upcoming weekend they were going to spend lugging things through tight corners and crammed into the small complex elevator. 

And once all his shit was more or less jig-sawed together in a massive pile in Axton’s living room, with the three of them enjoying pizza and making jokes about Vaughn saving the day, everything felt_ right_. There was a sense of closure-- even if his lease had a few more days on it- that that bad part of his life was _over_. Totally over. Nothing left to tie him to the old, and only looking forward to the new. 

As far as home-burglaries went, maybe this _was _a blessing in disguise since it freed up his entire weekend. 

Especially since they decided to stay up the rest of the night drinking and playing video games, and Axton and Vaughn broke the beta’s coffee-table as Vaughn was showing off a jiu-jitsu move that _maybe_ they shouldn’t have been trying when drunk. 

That was okay though. Rhys knew a _perfect_ place right down the hall where the beta could get another.

**Author's Note:**

> Vaughn is a shady-ass mofo who gets shit done AHAHAHA ...naaaah you _know_ he beat their asses, threatened them with police and license-plate numbers, made 'em return Rhys' shit, adn warned em off trying crap like this again xD AHAHA idk hehhe ANyways, this was a fun little fill before I eventually make a sequel to Broken Bonds haha :D WOO!
> 
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> 
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